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I think the issue here is that we're finding out now how much of a hash the police in Altoona made of the initial arrest, and the fact that so much of the key evidence stems from this arrest makes the prosecution a little dicier than it seemed initially. When the arrest first occurred it appeared to me, based on the reporting, that Mangione had consented to a search, which makes sense because anyone stupid enough to carry obviously incriminating evidence around with him for several days after committing murder would probably also be stupid enough to consent to a search. Now it looks like the police may have not obtained consent and instead relied on specious reasoning to determine they had probable cause and didn't need a warrant.
Now, whether this was a mistake is theoretical, because it doesn't appear to me that they would have had any justification to either get a search warrant or detain him based on an identification of a McDonald's employee who had never seen him before. The police were under pressure to investigate every lead, no matter how improbable, and I doubt they wanted it to come out later that someone had identified a mystery man whom they had questioned briefly but had eventually gotten away with a backpack that may have had incriminating evidence in it. Anyway, I suspect the judge will find the search justified and allow the case to go to trial because it's obvious that Mangione is guilty and any technicalities are an issue for the appellate court. But it looks like the police may have actually fucked up here.
It would be especially hard to get probable cause from this given that she’s a made-up person with an AI generated photo that never actually existed.
Wait, what?
•Initial reports that the identifying witness is named Nancy Parker, photo circulated by media
•there’s only one single photo of her in existence and it looks like like something a three year old instance of stable diffusion would crap out on a bad day
•initial reports that she’s 85 and lives in a nursing home and she is technically a “volunteer” at McDonalds so the press can’t interview her and there’s no actual record of her employment.
•FBI quietly says she’s not actually getting any reward money due to a technicality
•all the information about her and the photo all seem to have been subsequently retracted and scrubbed
•all subsequent media reports just call this person “the employee” and don’t give name, age or gender
•So now we have no name, no face, we don’t even know the employee’s age and gender and no one is actually getting a reward
I’ll be interested to see if this person actually testifies at the trial or if they’ll find a way around that
Initial reports from whom? Any reputable media organization? Or people on Reddit? I couldn't find anything about this woman from a reputable source. What I do know is that the police released the 911 call last week as evidence in the suppression hearing and the woman on the call most certainly wasn't an 85-year-old volunteer but someone in management who said she was reluctantly making the call at the behest of customers who insisted she do so. I mean, what's the theory here, that the police already knew who he was and where he was and made up a fictitious person to take credit for the arrest then inexplicably decided to do a U-turn, even though it would have been abundantly clear to law enforcement from the beginning that she may have to testify at trial? Not to mention that there were interviews with McDonald's patrons who were there at the time of the arrest referring to the woman as a manager. I'm not sure what the theory is here.
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This article https://thealliancerockband.com/nancy-parker-has-reportedly-been-fired/ says her family removed her info to stop her being harassed, which makes sense to me.
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The police don't have probable cause to search a suspected hitman that a McDonald's employee calls 911 over and says they recognize the guy from the news and then the police show up and think hey yeah he kinda does look like that guy from the news? And then they talk to him and he presents a fake ID and starts shaking if they ask if he's been to NYC recently?
You know what proves he was clearly recognizable from the surveillance pics on the news? The fact they caught the exact guy that was in the surveillance pics on the news!
I would hope they put handcuffs on him right there and at that point everything on his person is fair game to open up.
What should have happened if the suspect didn't talk at all and offered no ID and simply said "no searches! I want my lawyer! am I free to go?" over and over?
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The police would have also seen the surveillance images of the suspect, and could ID him themselves once they saw him based on the McDonald's tip, no?
If I remember right, the only images those officers had seen were (1) where he was wearing a mask and (2) poor quality / unusual angle - so a confident positive ID is unlikely. Now, Mangione did fuck up by presenting the police a fake ID, the same one he used for the hostel he stayed at in NY which gives them cause for arrest, but the police didn't get a search warrant before searching his backpack which is a big screw up.
The images are here: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2024/12/b73a00e1-472a-4bda-9d4e-16efbd624c61_1920x1080-800x450.jpg
I would think that if you are standing talking to this guy you could form a pretty good probable cause based on those? You're not like counting nose-hairs, but he seems pretty recognizable.
And as pusher_robot points out, once the cops have probable cause, the next thing the will do is arrest you! And then they can search your stuff (that you are carrying) without a warrant. (may be some exceptions, but I think a heavy-ish backpack in the possession of a guy who probably just assassinated a dude with a silenced pistol would not be one)
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Why wouldn't that be covered as a search incident to arrest?
Depends on when the arrest and search occurred. Police in my state have screwed this up before by doing the following:
-Detaining someone to investigate something suspicious (specifically a misdemeanor where an arrest is not mandatory)
-Searching the suspect's backpack
-Arresting on the misdemeanor + what was found in backpack
-Charges on the felony stuff in the backpack get dismissed because officers can't show they would've inevitably discovered the backpack's contents because the arrest on the misdemeanor wasn't mandatory
It's only a search incident to arrest if there's a valid arrest first. If detaining Mangione on suspicion of a fake ID wasn't a mandatory arrest type of offense and he was only detained and not arrested, then it's possible they searched the bag too early.
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